A fortress in the pass built to seal off the road to Silesia

Srebrna Góra Fortress was built to protect Silesia, which Prussia had taken from Austria in the Silesian Wars in the mid-18th century. Frederick the Great ordered the fortification of Przełęcz Srebrna, which lies at an altitude of 586 metres above sea level - this was one of the most important routes by which Austrian troops could most quickly advance from Bohemia into the heart of Prussian Silesia. Sealing off this passage was meant to prevent a repeat of the loss of the region, over which Prussia and Austria had fought for years before.

The complex was laid out across two hills dominating the surrounding area: Forteczna Góra (686 metres) and Ostróg (627 metres). It consisted of six forts in total. At its heart is the donjon, considered the largest of its kind in Europe - a structure made of four connected towers, with walls twelve metres thick and a diameter of sixty metres. Inside it held a hundred and fifty-one casemates spread over three storeys, as well as storerooms, wells, workshops, a bakery, a brewery and a chapel - the fortress was conceived as a self-sufficient town, able to withstand a long siege without any outside help.

A building project on a scale Silesia had never seen

The work took twelve years, from 1765 to 1777 - for a fortification of this size, this pace was considered record-breaking. Between four thousand and four and a half thousand workers were employed in the construction, and the whole project cost more than one million six hundred and sixty-eight thousand thalers, financed from special taxes. The garrison was intended to eventually number between two and a half and three and a half thousand soldiers, defended by two hundred and sixty-four guns and mortars. Nine wells with a combined depth of almost five hundred metres were cut into the rock beneath the fortress, so that the garrison would have access to water even under a tight enemy encirclement.

Siege during the Napoleonic Wars

The fortress faced its only serious test of battle in 1807, during the Napoleonic Wars. Troops allied with Napoleon, including Bavarian and Württemberg units commanded by Jérôme Bonaparte, the younger brother of the Emperor of the French, advanced on the fortress. An assault took place on 28 June 1807 - the garrison responded with artillery fire, and the attack was repelled. The fortress was never finally captured, because the Peace of Tilsit was signed on 9 July 1807, ending military operations on this front. Srebrna Góra Fortress is still remembered today as one of the few fortresses in Silesia that was never taken by storm.

From garrison to training ground and heritage site

The fortress's military significance began to wane in the second half of the 19th century. In 1860 an order was issued to begin dismantling it, and in 1867 the garrison left the fortress for good - after its departure the site served for a time as an artillery training ground. At the end of the 19th century the authorities halted further demolition, recognising the site's tourist potential, and access to the pass area was made easier by the Owl Mountains rack railway.

During the Second World War, the Ostróg and Wysoka Skała forts served as a prisoner-of-war camp for Polish officers, designated Oflag VIII B and operating from December 1939 to September 1941 - its prisoners included Rear Admiral Józef Unrug. In 1940, nine officers escaped from the camp, and three of them managed to reach as far as Syria, where they joined the Carpathian Rifle Brigade. After the war the fortress fell into decline, and work to restore it to a usable condition did not begin until 1965. A weapons museum opened on the site in 1974.

The fortress's annual festival

Once a year, in summer, the fortress hosts the Fortress Festival (Święto Twierdzy) - an event whose main attraction is a re-enactment of the 1807 battle featuring soldiers in Napoleonic-era uniforms and camp followers. Re-enactment groups set up camp on the fortress grounds, and the programme includes combat displays, a soldiers' tournament, workshops and a fair with regional produce, as well as night tours of the fortifications. It is the best chance to see the fortress brought to life just as it looked when it truly defended Silesia.

What can be visited today

Today, visits focus mainly on the donjon, where visitors can see the former storerooms, bakery, armoury, powder magazine, wells and workshops, as well as the ring of bastions surrounding the central structure. The Wysoka Skała fort with its viewpoint is accessible separately, and on the other side of the pass stands the Ostróg-Spitzberg fort. After the Napoleonic Wars ended, the fortress never again took part in an armed conflict on such a scale, so what visitors see today is largely a fortification frozen in the state it was in at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries - plus a weapons museum and traces of the wartime episode of 1939-1941. Not far from here lies Kłodzko Fortress, another great Prussian fortification complex in the Kłodzko Land, where a completely different and much darker chapter of 20th-century history played out instead of a Napoleonic battle.